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In The Time of the Butterflies

Rainy Season has a bad sound to it. If you live in another part of the world, you might hear those words and expect Yucatan to be muddy, soggy and full of mosquitoes during that time. So, you decide to visit the Yucatan Peninsula between the months of June and November, which is our “rainy season”, I think you will be in for a pleasant surprise.

Unless there is some highly unusual weather pattern, mornings will be sunny and bright… in other words, perfect weather for doing almost anything there is to do in Yucatan. It will be hot.. in the high 80s or mid- 90′s many days. And it may be a little humid. But the humidity here is nothing like I have experienced on the US Eastern seaboard.

Our very hot months are April and May when the heat can be scorching. You might even call that time of year the Yucatan summer. But I have found that most visitors, are not uncomfortable in July, August and September in Yucatan. As Yucatan has no standing water, other than fresh-water cenotes that are constantly being refreshed from underground, you will find surprisingly few mosquitoes. And the benefits of being here during this time far outweigh the drawbacks.

Rainy season is actually my favorite time of the year. The heavy thunderstorms that we get on many afternoons around 4-5 PM drop the temperatures into the 80s or even the 70s in the evening. The countryside is lush and green, and the corn is “as high as an elephant’s eye”.

Best of all are the literally thousands of butterflies of all sizes and colors. It is worth venturing out for a day in the country onto the smaller roads just to experience the butterflies. While use of chemical fertilizers and weedkillers is growing, these are generally only applied on a few small parcels of land. This leaves the vast majority of Yucatan chemical-free. As agricultural plots are very small and cash is limited, I have never seem aerial spraying.

Growing up in England as a child, I remember the many butterflies most of all. It is a sadness and disappointment now to go back in summer and see very few of my beautiful friends, even though my parents live in the countryside. On Yucatan’s back country roads, they rise up around you in clouds – yellow, brown, blue, black, big and small. And the summertime is the best time to view them. Take a trip out to the countryside in the Yucatan and you’ll see what I mean.